County agencies to share in state grant money

Sue Thackeray

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, August 21, 2003

"It's important the we support programs that bring justice to offenders and healing to victims," Perry said in announcing the grants. "These Montgomery County programs help provide the resources and support to build stronger communities."

The awards are funded by the Governor's Criminal Justice Division through a variety of federal grant programs.

The Montgomery County Women's Center received two grants totaling $160,000.

"We received two grants that were $80,000 each," said Women's Center Director Nancy Harrington. "One was from VOCA, the Victims of Crime Act, which is federally funded through the Department of Justice, and the is a VAWA, Victims Against Women Act, grant."

The money from the VOCA grant will primarily be used to finance counseling and case management services for the center's outreach program. The VAWA grant money will be used for similar services, but will focus on women staying in the center's shelter, Harrington said.

"This $160,000 is about 10-percent of our total budget, so it's very important to us," Harrington said. "We want to be more than just a Band-Aid, and this money allows us the opportunity to offer ongoing assistance."

The center has received both grants for the past several years, but must reapply and qualify each year, Harrington said.

The mission of The Women's Center is to provide safe shelter, crisis intervention, counseling and support for victims and survivors of family violence, sexual assault and abuse and to offer community education on those issues. It has been in existence since 1986.

Montgomery County Juvenile Probation also received $80,721 from the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant Program.

"This is very significant," said Ron Leach, juvenile probation director. "It allows us to expand or enhance existing services and implement new programs to address the needs of the juveniles in this county."

The money will be used to help continue the department's truancy program, which was started last year using money from the same grant.

Juvenile probation works with the county's justices of the peace, who refer habitually truant juveniles to the program. Since it's inception, Leach said the program has had an 85 percent success rate.

The remainder of the money will be used to address the problems of juvenile sex offenders in the county.

"We have had a significant increase in the number of juvenile sex offenders, ages 10 to 16," Leach said. "We have one juvenile probation officer who works solely with sex offenders, and her caseload has become overwhelming, so we're going to add a second probation officer to work with the sexual offenders."

A portion of the money will also be used to administer polygraph tests to the sex offenders, which is required by the court, and install software on the home computers of sex offenders to ensure they are not visiting inappropriate Web sites, Leach added.

This is the third year that Montgomery County Juvenile Probation has received money from the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant Program.

Perry also announce an $80,000 grant to Child Advocates of Montgomery County. That money will be used to train and supervise volunteers to provide advocacy services for children who are the victims of abuse or neglect.

Each year, the Governor's Criminal Justice Division provides more than $130 million in grants to a variety of programs for juvenile justice, crime prevention and victim services.